When I'm Gone
by theworldwasgone
Summary: I'd always imagined dying by falling down the stairs, yet here I was, a hole in my chest, blood filling my lungs and all I could do was piece together incoherent thoughts in random orders. I'm Morgan Dree, I've just been shot by my father, and my story is only just beginning. (Can't decide on pairing, or if there even should be one, vote in the poll, thanks.)
1. Chapter 1

_I realize I have Believer up and going still, and I have huge plans for that I'm STILL fleshing out, but this idea just wouldn't leave me alone. I've been dreaming about it, thinking about it, and just I need to write it, lest it drive me insane. May or may not have some basing on the song Cups by Anna Kendrick. Just give this a chance, or don't, also vote in the poll for WHO you'd like the romantic interest to be, if there even will be any._

**X**

Maybe the irony of the situation shouldn't have been lost on me. Maybe I shouldn't have been so brash and demanding. Maybe I wouldn't have ended up in this situation.

Blood spilling down the front of me, staining my white blouse, the hole was caused by the goddamn gun. I mean, he got the right side of me, so my heart was fine, I think? Not that it mattered, with how I felt, I was pretty sure the shot was lethal.

I couldn't really tell, seeing the blood drip down the front of me was foreign. Almost like watching a movie. The numbness that spread through me was odd and the fact that if I looked down at the right angle, I could practically see through the shotgun blast.

My lungs felt empty and I tried my best to inhale, but the blood just kept going and I was looking ahead like maybe some type of light would show up and I'd be lifted off to Heaven, Hell, the next life? Perhaps I would end up reborn.

I guess I should have seen this coming, really.

My life was ending and somehow I found myself laughing.

I opened my mouth to maybe form words, but cracks and clicks were the only thing to leave my mouth. Utterances of breath were all that spilled out of my mouth as I felt an odd coppery taste within my lips.

Blood was spilling from my mouth now, but it felt more like mucous being hacked up into my throat and seamlessly spilling onto the front of me.

I honestly thought I might go for stupid reasons.

Falling down a lot of stairs and breaking my neck.

Falling on a knife.

Crashing into the obvious tree in front of me and realizing it too late.

Drinking too much alcohol in a drinking contest.

Not that people dying that way were stupid, but in all of those situations, I'd have been killed by my own doing. Not someone else's.

Mine and mine alone and yet.

I was standing with a gaping wound on my right side and slowly I could feel the beats of my heart grow slow and my breath wasn't what it use to be.

It was all strangely numb. There was no pain. Everything was silent, too, yet I could see everything in front of me.

His angry face, his tight grip on the shot gun.

Behind him stands them, and they are all shocked.

They never expected this from me. I was same age as them, pretty much. Barely seventeen and here I was, dying in front of them.

Despite my dying, I still found my ability to stand unhindered.

"D'sthis satis...fy you?" I was choking on my own words as they left my mouth before I sputtered as more blood dripped down my chin.

His angry expression became one of horror, realization, and then sheer agony.

"D'd I make… youhappy, finally, dad?" I smirked as I sputtered again and made one bet on stepping forward slowly.

I watched as my dad's rust colored skin paled, his green eyes wide from fright and his brown hair disheveled. Mostly there was that shock and fright on his face.

I was comforted by that shock and that fright somehow.

Maybe my own dad had learned humanity?

What a time to be learning it, right as his own daughter was dying. Maybe he'd take the shotgun and he'd stick the barrels in his mouth and pull the trigger, ending his existence as he ended mine.

Shit, I was supposed to be thinking Heavenly thoughts. Praying for forgiveness.

Could I be forgiven?

I'm sure I could be forgiven. Maybe if I asked for it.

I stepped forward again and I felt myself stumble as he let out an agonized scream. He turned his shotgun on himself and before they could stop him, he shot himself in the head, through the mouth.

I let out a breathy laugh and reached for the hole in my chest, my fingers tracing against something gooey. I pulled my tanned fingers from the wound and saw red.

Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised by the color of my blood, but here I was, seeing it.

God forgive me now. I might not have been an astute religious person, but for once, see pity upon me and forgive me for everything I've ever done.

I hate to say it, but I don't want to die.

I sputtered again and my vision blurred as they remained shocked in fear. One trembled and stepped forward and I finally fell.

I could hear faint screams, and the loudest I could hear was Alice.

I'm so sorry guys. Please forgive me. God forgive me.

The pain seemed to briefly reappear before that light had shown up.

I was dying, and I didn't want to.

I went towards that light and I was overwhelmed with brightness.

This wasn't even the very beginning of my story, but it's where I need to start.

This is the story of how I lived, died, and by all the odds in the world, I came back again.

I'm Morgan Dree, I'm a friend of the Cullens, and I've just been shot by my father.


	2. Chapter 2

Everyone was silent as a small funeral was held. It was a small funeral, only a few people there as the casket was lowered into the ground and words were said. Nearby, another casket was being lowered into the ground, but no one seemed to mind or care. Everyone stared at the recently buried casket and the nearby headstone.

**MORGAN DREE**

**FRIEND, DAUGHTER, SISTER, HERO**

**1989 - 2005**

The words stared back at everyone mockingly, and nearby stood a stand with her picture. She was grinning from ear to ear, wild brown hair pushed over her shoulder and her grey eyes twinkling against her lightly tanned skin. While her smile shined brightly, it was obvious she was sick in the picture. Her eyes held bags beneath them and her cheeks were gaunt from quick weight loss.

To those who knew her, she was a good person. She never asked for anything and gave the very clothes from her back so that others might be better off. Even in her sickness she tried to take care of others. While she was a caring person, she was also one to not be trifled with. Her temper was something that was hard to press on, but when it broke down, she was not to be messed with. She never resorted to violence, just eerie, calm anger that unnerved those around her.

Those who had known her well said she was something of an angel, and before she had gotten sick, she had plans to donate a kidney to a young girl she hardly knew in town. Everyone thought her brave and when she had gotten sick, most were devastated. When her father realized she had become sick, he had one person in mind to help him.

Carlisle Cullen, of whom, he had met way back when his wife had issues and the help Carlisle had given made his wife able to live for years afterwards and give birth. So when his daughter faced certain death, he knew he needed to see the man. He and his daughter had set out and when Carlisle was found, he welcomed his old friend and his daughter with open arms.

It was a shock to see things go the way they had. A father shooting his own daughter, then taking his own life after realizing she had jumped in the way to save someone. No one knew how to handle the information. Mister Dree had been a kind man, and to hear of him do something so horrible was a shock to everyone that no one wanted to believe it.

But the casket buried beneath the ground and the funeral proved otherwise.

Morgan Dree was dead and her father was dead as well and nothing could change that.

Slowly the visitors left, the day still sunny, spiting the mood around the funeral. As it grew dark, figures appeared before the buried casket holding the body of Morgan Dree.

"How did I not see it?" The smallest of the bunch reached out, brushing her stone cold fingers against the stone of Morgan's grave. "I should have seen something. I could have prevented it…" The small woman shook her head and clenched her hands in her fist, her eyes flicking over to the other mound where Morgan's father lay.

"Alice, do not berate yourself. This needed to happen. She would have died either way, as sad as it is to say. Do not blame yourself for what had happened." The father of the group stepped forward as the small woman shook her head. "No, she shouldn't have died like that! All the times before, I saw her… we were friends and she went out in her sleep, just like she wanted. So why, why did I not see that?" The small woman stood and glared at the grave of Morgan Dree. It lifelessly stared back at her, mocking her existence.

"I… I don't know, Alice, but it has happened and there's nothing we can do." The father of the group pulled the girl into a brief hug as they all left after saying their final goodbyes. In a flash they were gone. In a flash the mound covering Morgan Dree's casket caved in. In a flash the cracking of wood and the movement of dirt was heard. In a flash a scream ripped through the night.


	3. Chapter 3

The afterlife was not as I thought it might be. I could hear people talk about how I was an angel and part of me wanted to laugh. I was a very giving person, because my mom raised me that way. But I was by no means an angel. Not implying I did horrible things, I just wasn't as saintly as the people had painted me as. I had an attitude. I had a temper. I would break a kid's nose if he pissed me off for whatever reason.

I was mostly hung up on how ironic what I had done was. I pulled my dad, turned him around right as he pulled the trigger to save a vampire. A vampire, who probably would have not flinched as the bullet shards bounced off their skin. Yet I pulled him and turned him right as he squeezed the trigger and ended up with a hole in my right side.

I didn't hate my father for what he did. At the time I was pissed. He was trying to hurt the people I considered friends and instead he hurt me and my anger got the better of me. When I had hoped he would shoot himself in his head, I didn't think he would actually do it. I felt awful for being able to think such a way and now I was left with the rest of eternity to deal with these feelings.

Did I mention that the afterlife felt like being stuck in a box?

As time wore on and the darkness seemed to grow heavier, the voices began to fade away and I was left alone. I had been alone for a while before I heard them. Alice and Carlisle, talking like they were just a few feet away, but it was getting hard to understand what was being said. Then their voices left and something happened.

I can't say what or how, but my once dark afterlife was filled with agony. Perhaps I did not make my way into heaven, maybe this was what hell was like? The pain was like a thousand needles being jammed into my back and before I could realize what was happening, I was clawing my way up, through dirt until I could feel the chill of air on my skin.

That was when the pain had become so agonizing I could not handle it. The needles continued to be jammed into my back before I felt the skin crack open like dry skin cracking over a sunburn. I screamed so loud I was certain I would wake the rest of the dead, but I was found alone.

Suddenly there was weight upon my shoulders unlike anything I was use to. My body felt like it was shifting, the muscles beneath my skin were tightening, stretching, reforming and finally it had all stopped. When I had looked behind me, I did not expect what I saw.

Two massive wings, the same light brown color of my hair jutting behind me. They looked twice as long as I did, perhaps longer, and they brushed against the ground and I felt it. I felt the feathers push against the muscles. I felt them, they were there, on my back. I had been dead and now I was back, with wings.

I did the only logical thing I could think of. I did what anyone else in my situation would have done.

I screamed.

I screamed because I know I died. I screamed because I was buried. I screamed because my dad was dead. I screamed because the afterlife was supposed to be different than this. I screamed because I had two giant wings hanging limply from my back and I could feel them. I could make them twitch and move and it felt so natural, yet so unnatural. It was like suddenly growing thumbs. I would be able to see the thumbs, watch them move, make them move, but it wouldn't be right. Instead of growing another set of thumbs, I grew giant wings that were heavy and already I could feel the muscles in my back and chest strain from having to deal with their added weight.

Why had this happened to me? I was no angel. I wasn't even that religious, and yet I was here with wings. I had just crawled out of my own casket and I grew wings. I had died, I had been killed, I felt my mind leave and here I was, wings drooping behind me, and I was moving.

My screaming had finally stopped and I tried to understand what had happened. I saw in funeral attire. A fitting black dress, part of it hanging in tatters behind me from my wings, it was covered in dirt and mud, like the rest of me. The wings had a slight wet sheen to them and dripped with blood and the pain in my back was still there, but not nearly as agonizing. I knew I had to get away from the graveyard.

Walking was difficult. The muscles in my wings were straining as the wings hung limply from my back. The muscles connecting the wings to my back were both in my chest and in my shoulders and they were straining as well, but I needed to get out of here.

"It's interesting, isn't it?"

I jumped at the voice and sluggishly turned around to see a girl. A young girl, perhaps a few years younger than me with wings like my own, but hers were folded against her back.

"You're really not supposed to be here, you know?" She was smiling as she said this, her black eyes concentrating on my limp wings. "You're sort of in the afterlife, if you're wondering. When we die, we wake up in the next world, existing right along the world we use to be in. They can't see us, we can't see them, but we know they're there. Ghosts? Simply us managing to find a crack in the world. But you, you're still in the first world, somehow. How? Not sure. It was my job to come and get you to show the ropes, but you're stuck on this side of the veil, so to speak."

I stared at her, her lips moving as I tried to digest what she said. It… made sense in a way, and explained everything I had been familiar with, I guess. I was stuck in purgatory, it sounded like.

"So… I'm supposed to be in your world, which exists on this world, yet I'm still in my world. So is this like purgatory?" I stared up at her as she laughed and it sounded more like a cough. Her voice was strangely rough for looking so young.

"Purgatory doesn't exist, actually. Life cycles like this… There's the first world, where we all started out, then there's the next world, the one I'm from and you're supposed to be in. In this next world, I guess you can say we become like angels and nothing in the first world's life determines whether you get wings or not. Even the worst of us. In this… second world, we exist normally, live new lives or gather up the remains of our old ones. We aren't sure what the purpose of it all is, really. But in the second world you can have a choice after a while. Continue living here… err, there, or move back to the first world. Reincarnation, so to speak." I blinked and found what she said was crazy.

"So even Hitler got wings in the next life? Jeffrey Dahmer?" It seemed insane that just anyone could die and go onto the next life no matter what they did in life.

"Sadly, what might seem reprehensible to most here, aren't so reprehensible where I come from." Her words felt like someone had just shoved my head in a guillotine and just let the blade down over my head.

"So things like rape, murder, cannibalism, abuse, shit like that just flies right on by there?" I was disgusted. This is what everyone was destined to end up as when they died? "What about God? Where is he in this grand old plan? Religion? Does everyone get the luxury of wings, only to be doomed to watch over their shoulder? I don't want this!" I stared back at the wings on my back, I wanted them gone.

"I can't exactly answer those questions…" The girl grew eerily quiet and it took me a moment to realize she was gone. I let out a grunt and glared at my wings. I needed to get rid of them by any means necessary.

I had finally managed to get away from the cemetery and made it out to the forests around La Push and Forks. The only way I had known any time had past was because the sun was peeking into the sky and what I was planning to do was crazy at best.

I sat my ass down, my wings bending at painful and awkward angles as I gripped the base of my right wing. I was not going to go about existing as some weird creature. Scars and pain be damned. I just wanted to be normal. I wanted to be dead right now, in the ground. my casket caved in and dirt filling the cracks between my fingers and toes as my skin rotted and my body decayed.

I breathed in and I tore as hard as I could. I had not expected to get any real damage done, but somehow the muscles in my arms and back were stronger than I had thought possible. The pain felt a lot like what I thought the shotgun shot felt like. I had been so numb at that time, but now I felt everything. I tore and tore until the wing hung in my hand, soon falling to the ground. I fell forward and groaned from the pain as the wounds on my back seemed to seal themselves.

Only to be replaced by the feeling of a thousand needles.


End file.
